Pulling into a dirt lot behind what must have been the penitentiary itself, I feel utterly disoriented.  Men move purposefully about, leading horses, hefting western saddles, cleaning corrals, moving bales of hay.  Horses whinny and the air is filled with dust from the pens where horses are being worked.  I search for a way to distinguish the prisoners from the cowboys around me, figuring I should look for men with shady glances wearing striped prison garb, for guards with rifles. I see neither.  It crosses my mind that, being prisoners outside of their cells, some of the men should have manacles on, but I discard that notion as movie-based. How could anyone work a horse with their hands shackled together.

At a loss for what to do, I head past a few scruffy little horses hitched to a rail, to a shabby wood shack with squinty windows and a narrow door standing open.  I peer inside.
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The Colorado State Penitentiary in Cañon City, Colorado is about what I expected.  A collection of squat stone buildings sprawling over 80 acres at the base of dusky low sagebrush hills.  There’s the full complement of security shacks, guard towers and walls with razor wire that a maximum security facility deserves.

I’m way overdressed for this hot, Indian Summer day, but I’ve put on clothes that follow the letter of the written regulations provided to me before my visit.   Actually, the regulations were more explicit about what NOT to wear:  no shorts,  miniskirts, or tank tops, no see-through clothing, nothing in any way revealing or, heaven forbid, seductive.
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How can it be that Fall is already upon us?  Are those really yellow leaves on the willows, in place of ones that so recently had leafed out green?  It seems it was only yesterday that the willows looked like this, colorful but bare:

Late spring willows

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I am very fortunate to have more acres of pasture than I have horses to eat it. Right now I’m down to only two of my own horses, so thank goodness for good friends with lots of equine mouths to feed. My oldest horse is Scout, a mustang from the Piceance Creek herd near Meeker Colorado, who’s now 16 years old. He was 4 years old when he got caught up in the 1999 round-up of wild horses, and quite the little stallion.  I adopted him through the BLM Wild Horse program, picked him out of a hundred or so stallions in a corral at the Canon City Federal Penitentiary.  Scout’s a very special horse and I’m going to devote more than one post to him, all on his own.

And then there’s Magic, bred by my friend Peg, whose other broodmares, colts and weanlings try their darndest to eat as much of their allocated meadow as they can…but find it impossible to make a dent. Magic’s just 5 and I’ve been riding him since he was 3 years old. Here’s a picture of my two fellows, with my friend Christy’s gelding Ringo in the middle.

Magic, Ringo and Scout

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Now that I think of it, with all the exotic places I travel and thus long periods when I’m away from the ranch, I have more than the ordinary longing for summertime. It’s a period of green-ness and growth, of ease, light and lightness that fills my belly with a satisfaction matched only by an unusually perfect meal.

My friend Peg's broodmares keep the grass trimmed in one of the big meadows.

Low, prickly bushes bejeweled with wild roses line our mile-long dirt driveway. Their smell and color remind me of nothing so much as bygone days when my chubby childhood fingers were sticky with the pink sweetness of county fair cotton candy.

Most mornings I awake at first light (no curtains in our bedroom!) to the joyful concert of foraging robins. They’re at the worm-filled breakfast buffet that is my dewy damp meadow-grass lawn. Any fisherman intent on impaling nightcrawlers on a hook, to fling at the brookies in the river at the edge of the grass, has to compete with these sharp-eyed songsters. Myself I rarely fish. Too stand-entary an occupation for me…except for the swatting of mosquitos. But I’m happy to coat those succulent fish with cornmeal and fry them for dinner.

At this point of the summer, it’s finally haying time. In the barn meadow, grass is now so tall the heavy grass heads tickle the horses’ bellies. A swather creeps along the ditches like a burnt-orange alien bug of monstrous size, chomping the standing waves of grass in front of it. In its wake lies a dense ribbon of cut grass, filling the air as if a thousand neighborhood lawns had been mowed at once. Those swaths will take a couple of days to dry in the sun, helped by a breeze that can be as hot as dragon’s breath. If we get an afternoon shower, which is pretty common this time of year, it’ll take longer.

Peg, aka Brocker Quarterhorses, raises these cuties for sale.

Next I’ll be bringing you more about the horses and some of the wildlife that share summer with me. So check back for more…